Douglas players try to focus amid pain
Football team practices for first time without coach who became a hero.
PARKLAND — There’s a phrase that outsiders may not understand, and that’s fine. The members of the football team at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High know exactly what it means, and how any success they may enjoy in the fall can be traced to those two simple words.
Feis Up.
It’s a takeoff on “man up,” which has become a cliche in the sports world for finding a way to per-
severe through the toughest times. And if there’s any football team, anywhere, that knows about tough times, it’s the Douglas Eagles, who lost beloved offensive line coach Aaron Feis in the Feb. 14 shooting that also claimed 16 other lives at the school.
Monday marked not only a day of healing, but a day the Eagles had to Feis Up, walking past scores of banners flapping in the breeze supporting them as they held their first practice since the tragedy.
“We’re a man short but there’s nothing we can do about it,” coach Willis May said. “We’re glad to be back on the field because we need it. It takes our minds away from everything that’s going on. It helps us.”
One of Feis’ proteges, guard Gage Gaynor, added, “It means the world to all of us . ... The energy and the tempo today was great, so we’re all glad to be out here. It lifts our spirits.”
The practice, about 2½ hours long, ended with all 64 players huddled around May, shouting, “Feis Up.”
“That’s our motto for the year, ‘Feis Up,’ ” May said. “We can’t feel sorry for ourselves. He wouldn’t want us to feel sorry for ourselves. He would expect us to be men and go out and grow from it and be stronger and not whine and cry about it. Just Feis Up. He would like that.”
Feis lived it, and on Valen- tine’s Day, he died that way. He gave his life to help shield students from the shooter, a courageous act that countless students have said did not surprise them in the least.
A picture of this moun- tain of a man stands guard at the weight room at Doug- las High.
“They come in every day and rub his belly,” May said.
Warm feelings weren’t on May’s mind as the players gathered in that room before practice Monday. Some strag- glers didn’t make it at the prescribed time, 3 p.m. Others failed to wear black shorts, as instructed. Echoing through the empty halls, in no uncertain terms, was May’s displeasure.
“A good team doesn’t do that!” he told the players. “It’s called discipline, gentlemen!”
Just as May knows his play- ers have an enormous task ahead of him, so too does he. It’s a balancing act.
“To be honest with you, it sounds terrible, but we’ve tried to love on these guys a nd b aby everybody as much as we can but foot- ball’s not a game where you can always do that,” May said after the team meeting. “We’ve let them kind of slip and let them come and go, whatever, because we know they’re hurting. So there’s a fine line there and I’ve got to play that fine line but at the same time, I’ve got to make them accountable to one another and be football players.”
Within the business of trying to win games, there will be efforts to honor Feis. Scores of them. There’s the 73 jersey he once wore for the Eagles as a student himself, which will be rotated among the offensive line- men deemed as having the best effort in practice. It will be retired at the end of the season. There’s a scholar- ship in his name. T-shirts bearing his name. The hope that someday, a turf field will be installed at Douglas and called Feis Field.
The other victims will be honored as well. May plans to have large “17” decals on the side of each player’s helmet. And an athletic building, he hopes, will be called Hixon Hall, to honor Athletic Direc- tor Chris Hixon, another victim of the shooting.
The first day of spring practice always presents wrinkles, especially Monday. There was plenty of paperwork players had to turn in, yet another headache Feis cheer- fully took off May’s hands. There’s the obvious problem of who will coach the offen- sive line. For now, that too is on May’s plate.
“Until I can find some- body that I trust to do it,” he said. “I trusted Aaron. I could always know I could leave Aaron and they would be fine.”
Gaynor seconded that. “He meant everything,” Gaynor said. “He taught me so much. I was with him for three years. I owe everything I’ve learned to him.”
The 2018 season will have a different feel at every turn. An ESPN crew will tail the Eagles all season. Douglas will open with a trip to Atlanta to play a team from Canada, followed by a kickoff classic in Daytona Beach, opportunities unlikely to have come the Eagles’ way in a typical season.
To the Douglas community, Feis was more than a coach or the guy in the golf cart making sure all the kids got home safely amid afternoon traffic. Tributes continue to pour in on his Facebook page, which stands to be flooded May 17, which would have been his 38th birthday.
The past two months alone, a runner, Colie Macleod, thanked Feis for inspiring her to run a personal best in a 5K race. Debbie Bogaert Wanamaker wrote that two months after the tragedy, when someone asked if she still missed Feis, all she could do was break down.
Johanna Leighann Feis, his little sister who announced the Miami Dolphins’ fourthround draft pick on national TV Saturday, informed everyone that a scholarship will be awarded to a member of the football team best exhibiting Feis’ characteristics. The first qualification: “Have a big heart.” She attended Monday’s practice and May hopes to have her serve as team statistician.
While May walked to practice, it was pointed out to him that he coaches what will be most people’s second-favorite team.
“I hope we don’t disappoint them,” he said. “That’s the thing. We just hope we don’t disappoint Aaron and Chris and all the rest of the 15 and our community.”